


Seven Faces

by the_moonmoth



Series: Seven Faces [1]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: F/M, Non-Consensual Touching
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-03-25
Updated: 2013-04-21
Packaged: 2017-12-06 12:18:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,148
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/735541
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_moonmoth/pseuds/the_moonmoth
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The seven faces of god are in us all.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Warrior

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Shadow_Belle](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shadow_Belle/gifts).



> Written for **shadow_belle** for the sansa_sandor.livejournal.com holiday gift exchange. Sadly still in progress due to my ridiculous work schedule of the last few months, but hopefully to be finished sooner rather than later. Many thanks to **westeroswolf** for organising the exchange. Beta'd by my best girl **ownsariver**. Constructive crit is most welcome.
> 
> ETA 19/5/2014: I have sadly conceded defeat and abandoned this story. Please don't hate me too badly! I may come back to this fandom once the new book is out, but for now my muse has moved on, so no promises. Sorry to disappoint you all, but just wanted to let you know one way or the other (I know it sucks to be left hanging).

**7 Years Past: The Warrior (strength and courage)**

 

Alayne had just turned fifteen and was considered by all to be ripe for the plucking when Sandor Clegane came to the Vale.

 

He stood before Lord Petyr in the Great Hall at the Gates of the Moon, towering height, broad as an aurochs and burnt as ever, looking to pledge his sword to the Lord Protector of the Vale. Alayne could hardly bear to look up, half out of embarrassment that the truth of her wayward dreams would somehow show clear as day on her face, half out of terror of the man himself. She, along with the rest of the world, had thought him dead. Yet he ignored her, or as good as, glancing her way but twice, the first out of blank interest in his surroundings, the second more slowly but showing nothing beyond a passing interest.

 

“Cersei would pay me handsomely for your head, Clegane,” Petyr said smoothly in response to the Hound’s request. Alayne could barely believe her eyes and ears.

 

“Aye, if you can find her,” the Hound replied unconcernedly. “Last I heard she was running back to the Rock with her dragon-singed tail between her legs.”

 

“Indeed,” Petyr agreed, “though the fact remains that you are a traitor. Why in the seven kingdoms would I take you into my service?”

 

“Take my sword, or don’t take it,” the Hound rasped, starting to look irritated, “You’ve seen what I can do with it, that’s not changed. Whichever lord I pledge it to, makes no difference to me, but a man wants shelter and hot food this deep in winter-”

 

“And a wench to warm your bed, no doubt,” Petyr interrupted dismissively. “That is all very interesting, and yet… you are talking like a man who expects to be able to walk out of this hall, if he chooses, with all of his arms and legs still attached.”

 

Alayne watched in close attention as the Hound’s eyes flashed. “And you’re talking like I won’t.”

 

Petyr smiled his small, dangerous smile. “A wager, then,” he said. “I’ll bet your life against my guards there. Survive, and you may serve in my household.”

 

The Hound grinned darkly, drawing his sword. “I was hoping you would say that,” he replied.

 

*

 

The Hound won, of course. Alayne thought often on that fight, not because she admired her father’s callous attitude to the lives of men, or enjoyed the sight of blood and death, but because of the way the Hound’s terrible face had been momentarily transformed in the act of violence. She had seen him look thus once before, though those were Sansa’s memories and she should try not to remember them at all.

 

She did not try, not really.

 

Lord Petyr took him on, first as a man-at-arms, later as one of his personal guard. Alayne assumed that her father realised Sandor Clegane must know her true identity, yet nothing was said of it in front of her. She waited every night for a week with her door unbarred and a small bag packed tight with smallclothes and jewellery. Whenever she truly thought on it, her audacity made her giddy and sick with nerves, and so she tried not to think on it over much.

 

He did not come, did not offer to take her away or protect her. Did not pin her to the bed. After a month, she stopped expecting him to.

 

*

 

They had little cause to exchange words – a relief, Alayne told herself. He was never very pleasant to talk to. She did watch him now and then in the training yard, however. It was Randa who led her there, full of red-blooded admiration for the Lord Protector’s new man – she would not have noticed even if Alayne _had_ protested.

 

It was strange, though, that a woman could look on him and feel anything but fear or pity. Alayne – Sansa – had felt both of those things many times over for the Hound in King’s Landing, and since, and sometimes something else as well that was hard to put a name to – a fragile little feeling that she kept well hidden within the cage of her ribs. But Randa… Randa looked on him with open admiration for the width of his back, the strength in his arms, the hewn muscles of his bare chest (Alayne blushed to remember how they had hidden in the guard house to watch him remove his armour).

 

Sansa’s friends in the Red Keep had been so scarce – poor, sad creature that she had been – that the few, fraught exchanges she had shared with the Hound had been enough to cement him in her mind as some sort of… ally. In a strange way, Sansa – Alayne – still felt that he was hers. It was a queer, hot sensation to have the woman beside her crow over him so.

 

 _It is only because she has never spoken to him,_ Alayne reminded herself. Randa would not admire him so much if she had ever had a conversation with the man. At best, he was vulgar, coarse and rude. She tried not to think too hard on the fact that Randa, too, could be all of those things.

 

“But his _face,_ ” Mya protested one night as they dined together, just the three of them.

 

Alayne nodded firmly, relieved. “It is quite ghastly, Randa,” she agreed.

 

“What of it? We are none of us perfect and the rest of him may as well be made in the image of the Warrior,” Randa said, grinning. “And besides, I am not the least bit interested in that end of his anatomy.”

 

Mya and Randa laughed, and Alayne lowered her eyes, trying to pretend that she did not really understand what they meant.

 

She wondered what Randa would think if she knew Alayne had once kissed the Hound – though of course that was nothing but a distant dream of another girl’s life.

 

*

 

Months passed in this way, her life little changed by his presence. It was not that she hadn’t expected it – she had never expected to see him again at all – only that something about the unexpected sight of him standing outside her father’s solar, the sound of his rasping voice and look in his piercing grey eyes as he made bland greetings to her, put her off balance.

 

When Lord Petyr made her kiss him, and put his hand on her breast, knowing that the Hound was just the other side of the door made it somehow all the worse. If he ever came in… if he ever saw… her shame would be beyond imagining. Though she never stopped wishing he would.

 

She had always felt safer when Sandor Clegane had come to escort her, back when she was a prisoner in Maegor’s. Not because he could protect her in any way, but because he did not act as though he enjoyed causing her pain. At least not with his hands. In fact, now she thought on it, he was the only one of Joffrey’s Kingsguard never to hit her. In fact… hadn’t he… once?… Hadn’t he once refused…?

 

How could she have forgotten that? Had she ever thanked him?

 

But that was Sansa, and Sansa was gone. Alayne had never met the man before a handful of months ago.

 

*

 

And then, of course, there was Harry. Alayne had liked him well enough at first, handsome and well-mannered as he was. Now, when Petyr’s steward seated her beside her betrothed at feasts and dinners, Alayne had to force the smiles and pleasant conversation, and could not help but feel a fraud. She told herself it had nothing to do with the Hound’s mocking gaze resting on her from across the Hall in sullen, unfathomable watchfulness. Not least because, occasionally, she still dreamt of him in her wedding bed.

 

*

 

Then it happened, almost a year from the Hound’s first audience with Lord Baelish, and long after Alayne – Sansa – had ever thought it likely. Returning to her room for the night, about to call for Gretchel to come help her disrobe, a great hulking figure detached itself from the shadows and took her by the arm.

 

His grip was hard enough to hurt, and perversely, Sansa relaxed.

 

“Is it time to leave?” she whispered.

 

Sandor Clegane nodded.


	2. The Maiden

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Big thanks to my gorgeous beta **ownsariver**. Constructive crit is welcome.

**6 Years Past: The Maiden (purity, love and beauty)**

 

Alayne’s sixteenth nameday came and went hiding in a cave from a raging storm. But Petyr Baelish’s bastard daughter was slowly becoming nothing more than a memory, as had once happened to Sansa Stark, and the girl in the cave with the fearsome warrior for company struggled to work out who to be now.

 

They were both soaked to the skin, sleet melting on their hair and cloaks. Sansa’s body felt rigid with cold, skin stretched tight and bones quivering, so numb that she even risked edging closer to Stranger’s steaming body, hobbled and tethered to a rock at the back of the small cave.

 

“No,” the Hound told her shortly. “You’ll freeze. Take your clothes off and lay them by the fire to dry.”

 

She had brought a single change of clothes on his instruction, warm woollen skirts and smallclothes, a fur-lined cloak – that was not the problem. He was watching her, glancing up in sharp amusement as he coaxed the fire to life, enjoying her outrage.

 

She might have had to let Lord Baelish have his way, but that did not mean every man she came across was so entitled.

 

“Turn around,” she told him, lifting her chin. He snorted, then as the first small flames of the fire danced higher, he did as she commanded.

 

Peeling away her sodden clothing, Sansa was keenly aware of the size of the cave – no larger than her bedchamber back in the Vale. She was alone with a man who might turn around at any moment and see her entirely unclothed. He could overpower her in an instant and she would be helpless to resist. Heart racing, she quickly dressed once more in her dry garments.

 

*

 

The snow, already thick on the ground, had drifted over the entrance to the cave by the time night fell. They had supplies enough to keep the fire going and feed themselves, and after a while it started to feel quite pleasantly warm.

 

The Hound sat by the fire as they ate the rabbit he had roasted, dressed in his own set of dry clothes, tunic open at the neck and sleeves pushed up his arms away from the grease. She realised, after a little while, that she had been watching the movement of the muscles in his forearms and, blushing, looked away.

 

 _He is my saviour,_ she thought, _just like in Alia’s Song, and I the maiden in the tower._ But Ser Tristan had rescued Lady Alia out of love. Did that mean that the Hound felt the same for her? The thought made her tummy feel queer. If this truly were a song, he would have professed his feelings by now. She glanced at him. The thought of the Hound admitting his love for her made her want to laugh. Would he want to kiss her again? His face was just as badly scarred as she remembered – worse, even. She tried to recall how it had been, to have it so close to her own.

 

“Didn’t your septa teach you it’s rude to stare?” the man grunted, looking a little unsettled.

 

Sansa blinked, both in surprise at his reaction and embarrassment at being caught. “You always wanted me to look at you more,” she responded.

 

As soon as she said it, she wondered where the words had come from. The Sansa of old would never have said such a thing, but Alayne had always enjoyed sharp-witted conversation. She waited for him to get angry, saw it build in his eyes and braced herself. Saw as it receded again, slowly and with effort.

 

“I’m no prettier than the last time you saw me, little bird,” he said flatly, and somehow those words made Sansa’s heart expand sharply within her chest. She remembered Randa’s assertion that his face held little interest for her, and suddenly that did not seem fair.

 

“I like your face,” she decided.

 

He stared at her hard before moving closer, as though to test her sincerity. “And why would you say a thing like that?” he asked, voice low and tinged with a danger she remembered well.

 

She also remembered that he did not like liars.

 

“It meant I knew it was you,” she said simply, though that was not the whole of it. “I had disguised myself so well that you did not recognise me that first day in the Great Hall, but you could not hide who you were and I am glad of it.”

 

The Hound’s scarred mouth twisted in contempt. “I recognised you,” he returned. “I bloody well _came_ for you! Why do you think I spent so much effort earning my place in Littlefinger’s trust? Has it escaped your notice that we left the Gates of the Moon unchallenged and unharmed? That I’ve brought you to a place where no one has come looking?”

 

“Oh,” Sansa said, fighting not to recoil from his harshness. She had thought… she did not really know, but she had supposed that fate or the gods had brought him back to her, so that she might finally be free. She had never imagined that it was not fate, but design. “I did not…”

 

The words died on her lips as rage flashed in his eyes again. _Why is he angry? Why now, when I am trying to be nice to him?_ She was still sitting, and he, crouching, loomed over her – a calculated move, she concluded, and effective. _Why is he trying to intimidate me, why?_

 

She remembered now why it had been so hard to look him in the eye. Not the burns – not the burns at all. But she was not a little girl anymore and she would not be shown a liar. Defiant, she did not look away, and as she watched, something deep in those unyielding eyes shifted, just for a heartbeat, uncertainty sliding out from behind the shroud of shadows.

 

He rose suddenly, and went to check on Stranger. It only struck her later what an opportunity he had passed up – the Hound she had known as a girl would have delighted in forcing out her answers and mocking her mistakes. _I am not the only one who has changed,_ she thought with some satisfaction.

 

*

 

They rode together on horseback, sheltering at night in rocky hollows and shallow caves, and often it was so cold Sansa did not know how much longer she could bear it.

 

To pass the time she studied the Hound as intently as Sweetrobin had once studied his butterflies, pinned down and splayed out in the cases of his mother’s collection. Strange how her attention made him so uncomfortable, when once he had seemed so intent on making her look at him.

 

“If I ride in front, you can wrap your cloak around me and we will both be warmer,” she told him one morning as they packed up their meagre camp. She watched as, seemingly without his conscious thought, the Hound’s left hand drifted to the hilt of his sword.

 

“It’s harder on the horse that way,” he muttered dismissively, turning his back on her, but when it came time to leave, he swung himself up behind her, not in front.

 

It felt… strange… to be seated inside his arms that way, encircled by his body. She did not feel the same revulsion she had felt when Petyr put his arms about her.

 

“I was right,” she said later as they watched the early winter sunset cast the sky in delicate pink.

 

“About what?”

 

Sansa, sitting up straight with the posture her septa had once praised her for, wondered for a moment what it might be like to lean back into him and take the simple enjoyment the moment offered.

 

“It _is_ warmer,” she said, and did not.

 

*

 

Sansa preferred to sit by him in the evenings for the same reason. Even with a fire, the nights when they could not find shelter were bitter. She knew that this too made him uneasy, sensing the strain and tension of his muscles.

 

One night when she came to sit by him he simply rose and, with nothing but bloody-minded spite, re-seated himself on the far side of the fire. It had been a difficult day, preceded by many other difficult days, and Sansa felt her shoulders slump as she hugged herself.

 

“What?” the Hound growled, and it felt as though he were daring her to complain.

 

She looked at him, eyes narrowed. “That was discourteous, even for _you,_ ” she said, with as much disdain as she could muster.

 

He laughed unkindly. “You sit too close, you chatter incessantly. I’m sick of your chirping and your clinging.”

 

“It is _cold,_ ” she grit out, wondering if he would make her ask.

 

“This is winter!” he roared, boiling to his feet. “Of course it’s bloody _cold!_ What did you think, that there would be braziers and fur-lined tents to ease your way?”

 

The violence of his reaction brought Sansa to her feet as well. She stared at him, stunned, as he glared at her and puffed white breath into icy air.

 

“Of course not!” she said, a moment too late.

 

The burnt corner of his mouth twitched. “You have been nothing but a burden to me,” he rasped, voice even harsher than normal.

 

Sansa stilled like the deer in the sights of the hunter. Quietly, she asked, “Why did you come back for me, then? If I am such a burden.”

 

He turned suddenly, roughly, and strode away from her. Just as suddenly, inexplicably, he turned back. Her feet would not seem to let her retreat from his furious approach. Then he took her by the shoulders and kissed her.

 

It felt… hot, and… scratchy from his stubbly beard… he was overwhelmingly close, and… she did not know what to do with her hands. Utter bewilderment suddenly gave way to insight at the source of his anger. She felt the wetness of his tongue pushing at the seam of her lips, and a wave of desire rolled through her, staggering, dizzying in its precipitous intensity, so different to the things Petyr’s kisses had made her feel. So very different to that first kiss, taken in desperation and terror. _Slow down,_ she wanted to tell him, for she could not breath, but contrary to all her previous experiences there was something undeniably pleasant in the strange intrusion of his tongue in her mouth. Tentatively, she raised her hands to his face, resting her fingers lightly on either cheek as she had sometimes seen her mother do to her father. He shuddered and slowed for a moment, then dropped his arms to her waist and pulled her tight against his body in a crushing embrace, kissing her deeply again.

 

His whole body was hard against her own, the taut muscle that Randa had so admired as well as another hardness pressed firm against her belly that she could not immediately identify. She pushed at his chest lightly, attempting to regain some distance for propriety’s sake, but he did not seem to feel her, and as he lowered her gently backwards to the ground Sansa realised with a jolt what the hardness must be. As he started trying to loosen the laces of her bodice with a shaking hand, Sansa realised what it must mean he wanted.

 

Alayne may have been sixteen and of age, but Sansa was only fifteen and felt in many ways still a child. Despite the burning lust shooting lightning through her limbs, she was also afraid, and pushed at him again in earnest.

 

When he drew back, it was utterly unexpected. In her dreams, he had always held her down and taken what he wanted – what she, secretly, wanted.

 

Except that, faced with him – _really_ faced with him – she found that things had gone well beyond what she had wanted.

 

They stared at each other for a long moment. She was lying on her back within the cage of his arms, and part of her did not want him to retreat, yet it was a relief in the end when he did sit up.

 

“I’m sorry,” she said, for part of her was. She had not intended to wound him.

 

He reached out as though to touch her cheek, changing his mind halfway. “Still chirping your empty courtesies,” he said, looking down at her, face as difficult to read as it had ever been. He got up and went to their packs on the other side of the fire, and Sansa was about to protest his words when he added, “Bugger your apologies, they’ve no place here.”

 

*

 

They had to sleep close, there was no avoiding that, and it forced an uncomfortable peace down on them. Sansa lay awake for a while, back to back with the Hound, thinking on what had happened before she slid unawares into sleep.

 

Later, when the fire was little more than a mess of glowing embers, she woke herself up rolling towards the heat of the man by her side. Squinting in sleepy confusion, her eyes found his watching her through the dark.

 

She had woken from troubled dreams, and so it seemed to her quite natural to ask him, “Why did you stop?”

 

He stared at her in silence so long she began to question whether she had truly spoken, or merely dreamed that, too. Then he snorted softly and rolled onto his back, staring up into a clear black and fathomless sky. “You’re surprised,” he said, and the deep, rasping tones of his voice, quiet with the intimacy of their arrangement, seemed to reach right inside of her and curl around her stomach. “Seems like you’ve finally unlearnt your septa’s pretty lessons after all.”

 

“Yes,” she said, “life is not a song. You were right all along. Does that bring you joy?”

 

He did not answer, just as he had not answered her first question.

 

“Why _did_ you come back for me?” she pushed, but if he answered this time, it was long after the regular sound of his breathing had lulled her back into sleep.

 

*

 

It took nigh on a month to make their way to Gulltown port undetected, but when the boat finally lifted anchor, it was south and west they went, and not north.

 

“Where are we going?” Sansa asked as they stood on the deck and watched the town grow smaller. She could barely believe she had not thought to ask him before – she had just assumed he would take her home. Foolish, of course, for they had heard that Stannis had taken Winterfell, and Sansa now knew enough of the world to be wary of placing her life in a stranger’s hands.

 

And yet.

 

“Somewhere safe,” was all he said then, but a little over two days later they docked at Saltpans – what was left of it – and crossed the mudflats to an island in the inlet.

 

“Lady Sansa,” a tall man greeted her, dressed in robes of dun-and-brown. “You are as lovely as the Maiden herself.” And Sansa blushed happily, not for the compliment, but to hear her real name spoken at last.

 

 _Why does the Hound never call me by my name?_ she wondered that evening as she lay alone in her little hut. It only then occurred to her that the Hound, too, had a name that she might use.

 

The following morning, when he came to escort her up to the hall to break her fast, Sansa bobbed a dainty curtsey and said, “Good morning, Sandor.”

 

He gave her a strange look, but did not object

 

*

 

A handful of weeks after their arrival Jaime Lannister appeared with a companion near as tall as the Hound, who turned out to be a woman. Ser Jaime had killed Jory Cassel in a fight in King’s Landing and was a Lannister besides, and for both of those things Sansa could neither like nor trust him. She never said as much to Sandor, but it was clear that he felt the same way – two days after the pair had turned up, a sparring match in the yard turned quite brutal, and Ser Jaime ended up in the isle’s infirmary for a week.

 

“You should not have done that,” she reproached Sandor later as she bathed his gashes with clean water. “This is a holy place.”

 

“They worship the Warrior same as the others,” Sandor growled, eyes still glittering with unspent violence. Sansa had not asked what Ser Jaime had said to provoke him so – she did not think she wanted to hear it. But it was soothing to know that, difficult as he often was, as little explanation for his loyalty as he had given her, the man truly was loyal to her and her alone.

 

At night, she still remembered how he had kissed her, the feel of his desire pressed against her belly, and how he had not forced her when she had shown him she did not want it.

 

Sandor took Sansa’s wrist as she raised her hand to his face once more and made her meet his eye. “I said I’d protect you. I’m no liar.”

 

Sansa nodded gravely, believing him, though those words had last been uttered years before. “He’ll be no trouble, after this,” she said. It was true, she felt certain – beside the fact that she now felt he had received his judgement for Jory, Ser Jaime had also been parted from his sword hand and was but half the swordsman he had been before. For some reason he, too, wanted to join in her protection, but every pack had its hierarchy and Sandor had now shown him his place in it. _The lion has been brought to heel,_ she thought, and found it fitting.

 

When Sansa went to speak with him, watching with cool eyes as Brienne of Tarth helped him sit up painfully – when he spoke of honour and the need for redemption – Sansa believed what he said.

 

*

 

In the following months, knights, lords and men-at-arms seemed to find their way to the Quiet Isle in a steady trickle, the scattered bannermen of her brother and uncle. At first she thought it nothing more than the straggling of broken men seeking shelter. Then, one day, Sansa looked about her and realised an army had formed.

 

“Are we to reclaim the north?” she asked Elder Brother, breathless with the excitement of her new discovery. She had found him in the sept, kneeling in prayer to the wooden carving of the Maiden. Above him, a small window shone a wash of light into the alcove.

 

“Yes, my lady,” he replied simply.

 

The tears were sudden as a summer storm as she bent to kiss his hands. When she looked up again, Sandor was standing in the doorway, ever her shadow.

 

“We are to reclaim the north!” she told him, beaming, eyes still shining with tears and happier than she had been in years and years.

 

He did not seem to have heard her, staring at her as though he had never seen her before.

 

“Come,” she said, smiling, trying to ignore his odd reaction. “We have plans to make.”

 

She never questioned that he would join her.


	3. The Smith

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Many thanks to my poor exhausted beta ownsariver, who has saved me from infectious eyes and discontinuities. Concrit is welcome.
> 
> ETA 19/5/2014: I have sadly conceded defeat and abandoned this story. Please don't hate me too badly! I may come back to this fandom once the new book is out, but for now my muse has moved on, so no promises. Sorry to disappoint you all, but just wanted to let you know one way or the other (I know it sucks to be left hanging).

**5 Years Past: The Smith (creation and craftsmanship)**

 

It was not as easy as the simple march north that Sansa’s imagination had conjured up. The Wall was threatened by something worse than wildlings, and winter had set in deep. In the end, to reclaim her home meant taking her army as far north as north would go, losing friends to ice and blade alike, waking in the night from creeping fear that cut deep as the cold and nightmares that would not abate.

 

Months passed in desperation and misery, short days and long nights in which the only good moments seemed to come from sewing Sandor’s flesh back together, simply because it meant she could be with him.

 

“How did we arrive at this place?” she asked him once, close to despair. He was hot with fever from his wound, gaunt from too long in the terrible, gnawing winter.

 

He laughed, and when she caught his eye the low rumble of dry amusement was infectious. They laughed together over the strange, shared history that had brought them to the end of the world, and Sansa realised that though there had been no words, she had never felt closer to him.

 

*

 

Sometimes, she wished that she were younger – young enough to slip into his bed at night as though he were one of her brothers, and take innocent comfort from his presence.

 

Other times, she wished for something else… Like the night he appeared in her room, snow still caking his cloak he was so fresh from the battlefield. She had not seen him in over a week, but when she made to rise and ask him if he was hurt, he shushed her and crouched down beside her bed.

 

Waiting around to hear news of his safe return in the weak, scarce light of the northern sun, Sansa had often entertained the notion of having a romance with Sandor Clegane. He was practically her sworn shield by now – trusted – and she knew he liked her in the way a man likes a woman grown. Part of her felt that it would be fitting that he have a sweet memory of her to keep him warm out in the wind and ice, or to take with him if the worst should happen. Only then she would end up berating herself both for her childish fantasies and for letting such morbid thoughts enter her head. Septa Mordane had always said that the gods could hear one’s thoughts, and that she must be careful that a careless wish was not mistaken for a true prayer. Sansa’s faith had been stretched to the limit these last few years, but the thought of tempting the Stranger under such conditions made her guts twist in anguish.

 

“Just let me look at you, little bird,” he rasped on that night, quiet exhaustion weighing heavily in his voice as he slipped in from the shadows and the horrors of the freezing dark, and Sansa ached to reach out to him, embrace him, comfort him in that way he had seemed to want on the road.

 

She dared not. She was nearing sixteen, but at times it was still so hard to know her own mind – truly her _own_ mind – and Sandor confused her so. He was much changed from the days of the Hound, yes, but still taciturn at times, still coarse and rude. The gentleness her softer thoughts of him lingered on was amply balanced by his rougher qualities, and somehow, when faced with him in the flesh, he was always _more_ than she expected.

 

The next morning, as though to vindicate her hesitation, he barked and growled at her like the bad tempered dog he sometimes still acted, and could not bear to lay eyes on her.

 

*

 

Yet eventually came the new queen’s dragons, victory, and the spring.

 

Then – _then_ came home, and Sandor came with her there, too.

 

As the snows receded it slowly became clear what a ruin Winterfell had become, but Sansa did not feel daunted. She herself had been broken inside, burned down and collapsed in on herself, her life the mere shell of what she had once believed it would be. But she had rebuilt herself through Alayne, through the memory of her parents, through the hard-won and battle-scarred wisdom of Sandor Clegane, and through a strength she was beginning to understand was all her own. The matter of moving a few lumps of masonry about hardly seemed much of a challenge in comparison.

 

After the utter wretchedness of fighting the Others, the heartache and grief of losing so many friends, a new vitality began to rush in her veins and Sansa felt that she, like the earth, was finally waking up and unfurling her leaves towards the sun. _Things will be better now._ She would not let it be any other way.

 

*

 

Having let it be known by ravens far and wide that the Lady of Winterfell had returned to claim her birth right, it did not take long for craftsmen, hedgeknights and the sons of her bannermen to gather within her walls.

 

Sandor looked on the nobles and knights alike with a sneering contempt that provoked many to challenge him in the practice yard. Sansa let it happen, remembering Sandor’s decisive spat with Jaime Lannister. The challenges remained universally unwise, and served quite nicely to build both her own reputation and his.

 

Sandor had never sworn vows to her, but she knew his opinion on that matter – the years of his loyalty spoke truer than any oath, and his position in her household was quite clear to all.

 

Ser Jaime stayed as well. Not as close a friend as Brienne, but appreciated – and useful. He had promised to remain in her service until he had succeeded in helping her annul her marriage to his brother, and she in turn had privately sworn to help him reconcile with Tyrion if she could.

 

The new queen provided funds enough to begin rebuilding Winterfell and planting the fields, as desirous as Sansa for a stable north. It took time, with precious few materials from which to make thatching and barely enough rations to feed all the men who had descended on her lands. When she diverted the master mason’s best apprentice to restoring the sept in place of his work on the keep, Sandor could not contain his disbelief.

 

“I always knew you had it in you to be foolish,” he told her without preamble, “but I never thought you to be outright bloody stupid.” He had barged into her makeshift solar to tell her so, and Sansa was merely grateful that it was otherwise empty.

 

She tried to explain, but as a man who had only ever despised his family, Sandor found it impossible to understand the connection she wanted – _needed_ – to maintain with her past. The sept had been her father’s gift to his southron wife, the only thing of her mother’s that Sansa had left.

 

“So you see that my wish for its restoration has little enough to do with the gods, but if in the process it should please them, I do not see the harm in it,” she told him.

 

“Aye, and when men are still living in tents up against the curtain wall, do you think it’s your bloody gods who will keep them warm?” he snarled in a way she would once have found quite off-putting.

 

But Sansa was home now, and she had found new strength from the crumbling walls of her castle, drawn it from the land like the roots of a weirwood tree.

 

She looked at him calmly. “It is the difference of a matter of days, and if it please you I will be the last to take up my chambers once the keep is restored. But I will not allow the sept to collapse into nothing but ashes and rubble. Rage all you want,” she said. “The decision was mine and it has been made.”

 

His expression turned ever more sour but she sensed her words had taken him aback. Despite his loyalty, it seemed he was not yet accustomed to her position here, and the power that it brought. _He is not yet accustomed to my exerting that power over him. _She raised an eyebrow in challenge, waiting.

“As you say, _my lady,_ ” he said eventually, and with a mocking bow strode back out the way he had come. Sansa smiled to herself and went back to her work.

 

*

 

But it did not escape her notice, honed as her attention often was on him, that Winterfell was not the only one undergoing a rebuilding.

 

Sandor was a fighting man who had been at war his whole life – against his brother, on behalf of his masters. Sansa had noted time and again how much he had changed from the bitter man she had first met on the kingsroad all those years past, but even his time on the Quiet Isle had not been a peaceful one, for she knew that that too had been a battle, a melee within his very soul.

 

Now the world at large was at peace, Sandor seemingly contented in his life perhaps for the first time ever, and Sansa watched with great interest as he built himself anew up from the ground, at last on a steady foundation. Personal shield, man-at-arms, friend, advisor. Block by block, as Winterfell emerged, so he did.

 

She never questioned that her thoughts of the man and her thoughts of her home were so uniquely intertwined. It simply seemed pleasing in its completeness, the beginning and end of some indefinable circle. For she too had rebuilt herself, and it was here that they had first seen one another.

 

*

 

The first harvest coincided with the completion of the Great Hall’s roof, and Sansa could not hide her excitement for the coming festivities. Once, she had dreamt of the finery of a harvest feast in King’s Landing; now, her heart was filled with the triumph of survival, of a full belly and the rhythmic pull of the drum and fiddle.

 

“You should dance, little bird,” Sandor commented from beside her, a place of honour on her small high table, glancing drily at her tapping feet.

 

The sweet, strong beer of the fresh brewed barley and hops had carried her spirits high as the new roof, and teasingly Sansa leaned over to him and murmured, “If only someone would ask me.”

 

He snorted at what he took to be a jape, but was forced to give her a second look when her expectant gaze remained on him, unwavering. The moment stretched… and then was broken when Jaime Lannister approached and asked if she would do him the honour.

 

Still she wondered if Sandor would join her, cut in and send Ser Jaime to another partner. This was not the refined dancing of the southron courts, but loud, rhythmic, foot-stomping joy of the sort she had detested as a girl. _If ever I could imagine him dancing, it would be like this._ The rush matting jumped like the skin of a drum and Sansa felt the beating of her heart in time with the music as she looked about her and saw her people – a moment of pure earthly-bound pleasure that she realised she wished to share with Sandor.

 

He had moved from the dais to a nearby pillar, leaning against it with his arms folded over his chest as he watched the dancing, relaxed but alert. Watched _her_ dancing, she realised.

 

 _Let him look,_ she decided instead, feeling warm all over, and danced on.

 

*

 

It was nice – so very nice – to lean on his arm at the end of the evening, giddy with drink, as he escorted her back to her rooms. Having had his eyes on her all night. There was something almost pleasant about his manner, the way he looked on her with an unexpected warmth as she continued to laugh over Ser Jaime’s attempts to convince Lady Brienne that his request for her hand had indeed been genuine, and not merely brought on by drunken enthusiasm.

 

“You are very lenient tonight,” she commented. “Do you have no harsh words for my silliness?”

 

“I have plenty, girl,” he replied, but his mouth was making a small, twisted grin.

 

“Well then,” she said, smiling back, “I am grateful that you have shown such forbearance, to keep them inside your head.” She leant her temple against his shoulder, feeling affectionate. “And you should call me woman, now,” she added. “My name day has long passed.”

 

When he did not react she raised her head. He did not seem to have heard her, but was staring down at her with a queer frown on his face that made her feel suddenly self-conscious for her show of fondness.

 

“What is it?” she asked, quite drunk enough to be direct. _If he does not like it then he should say so._

 

“Sansa,” he started, and Sansa felt her face near split in half at the breadth of her smile, helpless in her delight at the sound of her name in his rough, familiar voice.

 

She realised then that they had stopped walking, and stood in the corridor gazing at each other by torchlight. He reached out to touch her chin, a gentle imitation of the way he used to grasp her, and Sansa reached up in turn, cupping his burnt cheek in her hand.

 

“Do you remember when I said I liked your face?” she murmured into the sudden hush, eyes drifting across his ravaged flesh. “I don’t think you believed me. I did not have the words to explain it properly, but it was true then and it’s true now.  I think… I think it is _because_ of your scars, they show your strength _._ I carry mine on the inside, but I know they’ve made me strong.”

 

“You’re not making any buggering sense,” he rasped, and Sansa realised her tongue felt as though it were made of velvet. She gazed at him instead, willing him to take her meaning, and as he bent forward she wondered if he meant to kiss her for the third time in her life. Her heart skipped up into her throat. Instead, he took her by the shoulders where she had begun to list dangerously, and steered her deftly back to her chambers.

 

*

 

The morning after, Sansa awoke from muddled dreams feeling unaccountably stirred. She rose and dressed despite the swirling of her head and stomach, and walked slowly and precisely down to her near-completed sept.

 

She looked about her for a moment at the empty alcoves awaiting their new effigies, filled for now with trinkets to embody the gods – flowers for the maiden, a wooden practice sword for the warrior. Sansa passed these by, coming to rest before the rusty smith’s hammer, found in the wreckage of Micken’s old forge.

 

She had not prayed in such a long time, and in truth she was not even sure she believed any longer, but she had woken on this spring morning with words overflowing from her heart and it seemed only natural that she should speak them here. Kneeling before the Smith’s alcove, Sansa bowed her head and gave thanks.


End file.
